CHAPTER VI

With his definite decision and unalterable plan of action, wonderful peace of mind had come to Riatt. He said to himself that he was now to have a few weeks—whatever time it should take him to lose his fortune decently—of being engaged to a woman whom, he now acknowledged, he passionately loved. He intended to make the best of it.

The next day as he walked up Fifth Avenue on his way to lunch with her, another inspiration came to him; it was not necessary to lose his money; spending it would be quite as effective. Acting on this idea, he went into a celebrated jeweler’s shop, and with astonishing celerity chose, paid for and pocketed a string of brilliant pearls.

It was a present that might have made any man welcome—and Christine had never been accused of not being able to express herself when she wanted to—but Christine had already welcomed him for his changed demeanor; his brilliant smile and unruffled brow told her as soon as she saw him that he was a very different person from the tortured and irritable creature who had left her the preceding afternoon.

Never were two people more disposed to find each other and themselves agreeable, and Riatt was in process of clasping the pearls about Christine’s neck (for she had had some unaccountable difficulty in doing it for herself) when the drawing-room door opened and Nancy Almar strolled in.

Her jaw did not actually drop at the scene that met her eyes, for that did not happen to be her method of expressing surprise, but her manner conveyed none the less an astonishment not very agreeable.

“Was I mistaken,” she said, “in thinking I was to stop and take you to the Bentons’?”

“Quite right, my dear. Only Max’s return has put everything else out of my head.”

“What, you didn’t ever expect him to come back?”

“You talk, Nancy, as if you had never heard that we were engaged.”

“If you really are, Christine, why are the Linburnes being divorced?”

“Because they loathe each other, I imagine.”

“What a changeable creature you are, Christine! It seems only the other day that you were crying your eyes out because Lee was engaged.”

Without glancing at Max, Christine became aware that some of the gaiety had gone from his expression.

“Have you seen my pearls, dear?” she said.

It was a complete answer, so far as Nancy was concerned, for she was one of the women who can never harden herself to the sight of another woman’s jewels.

“How beautiful, love,” she answered. “If they were only a trifle larger they might be mistaken for your old imitation string.” Then feeling that she could never better this, she took her departure.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Christine, “do you think I shall ever get so superior that Nancy can’t tease me when she says things like that?”

“Did you really cry, Christine?”

“The night you went away?”

“When you first heard of Linburne’s engagement?”

She nodded at him, like a child who would like to lie its way out of a scrape.

“But then I often cry over trifles,” she added.

“Like my going away?”

“Really, Max, you ought to be able to understand why I cried over Lee’s engagement. It was Nancy who brought me the news, and she was so triumphant over it. She said every one would think he had been making a fool of me. You know she has the power of teasing me more than any one in the world—except, perhaps, you.”

“I have a piece of news for you, Christine.”

“Good or bad?”

“Indifferent, I think you would say. It’s a scientific discovery.”

“An invention, Max? Could I understand it?”

“I think you can if you make an effort.”

“What is it?”

He put his arms suddenly about her. “I find I’m in love with you,” he said, and added a moment later: “And just think that I’ve been engaged to you so long and that’s the first time I’ve kissed you.”

Christine with her head still buried on his shoulders murmured, “But it won’t be the last.”

Riatt’s expression changed. “Not absolutely the last, perhaps,” he answered with something that just wasn’t a sigh.

She looked up at him. “That piece of indifferent news of yours—” she began.

“Didn’t I describe it correctly?”

“It wasn’t news to me.”

“You mean you had already guessed that I loved you?”

“I’ve always known it.”

“Always?”

“You can’t think I would ever have let you go away at all, if I had not felt sure. And if you hadn’t loved me, I couldn’t have brought you back.”

“I came back because—”

“Because the Linburnes were getting a divorce, and because Laura wrote you a letter. Do you fancy I had nothing to do with either of those events?”

And Riatt found himself answering almost in the word of Cyrano:

“Non, non, mon cher amour, je ne vous aimais pas.”

The days that followed were the happiest that Riatt had ever known. Only those who have lived in a brief and agreeable present can understand the fullness of joy that he was able to extract from it. If he had been under sentence of death he could not have given less thought to the future. He gave himself up wholly to the two excitements of making love and losing money.

At first he prospered more at the former than the latter. For at first, for some time after he had acquired the stock of the mine, the reports from it grew more and more favorable and old friends came to him and begged him to allow them to take up a little of it. His curt refusal to all such propositions increased the impression that he knew he had a very good thing and meant to keep it all for himself.

But he did not have very long to wait for the turn of the tide. Within a few weeks he received a letter from Welsley, alarming only because its intention was so obviously to allay alarm. It appeared that a liberal revolution was threatened; the concession from the government then in power would not bear the scrutiny of an impartial witness such as our own State Department. If, in other words, the present government fell, the concession would fall, too.

“However,” Welsley wrote cheerfully, “though the revolution has the support of the uneducated element of the population, which comprises most of the people, as they have neither arms, ammunition nor money, they can’t do much, unless some fool in the north is induced to finance them. You could help us a lot by looking about and seeing if there is any danger of such a thing.”

On receipt of this, Riatt instantly telegraphed to Welsley as follows:

“Count upon me. What is the name and address of the revolutionary agent here?”

The next day in a back bedroom of a down-town hotel, $10,000 changed hands between a slight, dark, very finished gentleman who spoke English with the slightest possible accent, and a tall, fine-looking young American whose name never appeared in the transaction. Within a month a shipment of arms had been smuggled into a certain South American country, with the result that the revolution was completely successful—as indeed it deserved to be. One of the first acts of the new government was to revoke the iniquitous concession of the San Pedro gold mine, made to “a group of greedy North American capitalists by the former corrupt and evil administration.”

Riatt’s bearing during this unhappy experience was universally praised. As he went in and out of his broker’s office, not a trace of anxiety visible upon his countenance, men would nudge each other and whisper, “Did you ever see such nerve? He stands to lose a million.”

The only moment of regret that he suffered was when one day, when things first began to look badly, he met Linburne and another man in Wall Street, and there was something subtly insulting and triumphant in the former’s manner of condoling with him about the situation.

Rumors of it reached Christine. She liked the picture of Riatt’s courage and calm, and hated the danger of his losing money.

“You’re not risking too much, are you, Max?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t you enjoy love in a cottage, Christine?” he answered.

She tried to make it clear to him how little such a prospect would tempt her, and gathered from the fact that he hardly listened to her reply that he felt confident there was no real danger.

With the success of the revolution, Riatt realized that his holiday was over, that he must tell Christine the truth and then retire to his old home and begin a new method of life on his decreased income.

It was now early April—a warm advanced spring—when he decided that the next day should see the end of his little drama. But, as we all know, it sometimes happens that those who set a mine are the most startled by the explosion; and Riatt, at an early breakfast (for he and Christine were going into the country for the day), with a mind occupied with the phrases in which he should bid her good-by and eyes lazily reading the newspaper, was suddenly startled beyond words by a short paragraph on the financial page. This stated in the baldest terms the failure of his brokers at home.

There was no country expedition for Riatt that day. He rushed down-town, leaving a short message for Christine, and by night he knew the worst, knew that the liabilities of the firm far exceeded any possible assets, knew positively that the comfortable sum he had intended to preserve for himself had been swept away, knew that he now really had to begin life over.

That night when he came back to his hotel, he understood for the first time that he had throughout been cherishing an unrecognized hope; that he had not been honest with himself, and that all the time beneath his great scheme had lain the belief that when the truth was known Christine would prefer him and his moderate income to Linburne and his wealth; that, in short, the great scheme had been all the time not a method of freeing himself, but a test of her affection.

Now any such possibility was over. Now he himself was facing the problem of mere existence—at least he would be as soon as he had collected his wits enough to face anything.

The next day, which was Sunday, he spent entirely with his lawyer. When he came back to his hotel, between the entrance and the elevator a figure rose in his path. It was Hickson.

“Riatt, I’m awfully sorry about this,” he said.

“Thank you, Hickson. It’s very decent of you to be,” Max answered as cordially as he could, but he was tired and wanted to be let alone, and there was not as much real gratitude in his heart as there should have been. He did not ask Ned to sit down until he had explained with his accustomed simplicity that he had something of importance to say. Then Riatt let him lead the way to one of those remote and stuffy sitting-rooms in which all hotels abound. He saw at once that Hickson found it difficult to say what he had come to say, but Riatt was in no humor this time to help him out.

“I’m awfully sorry this has happened,” Hickson went on, “not only on your account, but on Christine’s. I mean that I did begin to hope that life with you meant peace and happiness for her—”

To cut him short, Riatt said quickly: “Now, of course, the marriage is out of the question.”

Hickson’s face brightened, as if the difficult words had been said for him. “You do feel that?” he said, nodding a little as if to encourage his friend.

Max did not answer at first in words; he laughed rather bitterly, and then after a pause he said, “Yes, Hickson, I do.”

Ned was clearly relieved. “Of course,” he said, “I did not know how that would be. But I own it did occur to me. The world is very censorious of poor Christine. Every one will say that she is the kind of woman who can’t stick to a man in adversity. Yes, I assure you, Riatt, lots of these women who can’t put down one of their motors without having nervous prostration will pillory Christine for breaking her engagement, unless—” he paused.

“I don’t follow your idea, Ned.”

Hickson sighed. “Why, as long as you recognize the impossibility of the marriage, couldn’t you in some way make it appear that the breaking of the engagement came from you—as—if—”

“I see,” said Riatt. There was a short silence, and then he asked in a tone that sounded perfectly calm to Hickson: “Is this a message from Christine?”

“Oh, no. Not a message from Christine, though she has been trying to communicate with you for two days. She can’t see why you won’t even answer her letters. I told her I would find you—”

“In fact, itisa message, or at least you are her messenger?”

“No, Riatt, at least not from her. I have a message for you, but not from her.”

“From whom?”

“From Linburne. He has the greatest admiration for your power, abilities, in spite of any differences you may have had. He wants to offer you a position, only he felt awkward about doing it himself after what has taken place. He asked me to speak to you. It’s a good salary, only it means going to Manchuria, no—”

“One moment,” said Riatt. “These two messages, are they in any way connected?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Linburne’s offer is not by any chance the reward for my giving Christine a suitable release?”

Hickson was really shocked. “How can you think such a thing, Riatt?”

“Where did you see Linburne?”

Hickson hesitated, but confessed after some protest that it had been at Christine’s house.

“But you don’t understand, you really don’t,” he said. “She has been distracted by your reverses, and not hearing from you she has turned to me, to Jack Ussher, to any one who could give her news and help you, as she imagined—”

“I understand quite enough,” answered Riatt. “Thank Mr. Linburne for his kind offer and say I have other plans; and tell Christine she can have her absolution for nothing. I’ll give her a letter that will put her right with every one.” And walking to a desk:

“My dear Christine,” he wrote. “As you are aware, I have lost everything I have in the world, and though I know that to a spirit like your own poverty could not alter love, I must own that I, more experienced in privation, find that the situation has had a somewhat chilling effect upon my emotions. In short, my dear, I cannot begin life over again hampered by a wife. Thanking you for the loyalty with which you have stood by me in this crisis, and wishing you every happiness in the future, believe me“Sincerely yours,“R. M. Riatt.”

“Sincerely yours,“R. M. Riatt.”

He handed the note to Hickson. “I think that, taken externally, will effect a cure,” he said. “Good night, Hickson. I’m dead tired, so you won’t mind my going to bed. Oh, and I’m off to-morrow, so I shan’t see you again. Good-by.”

“Are you going home?” Hickson asked. But Max maintained a certain vagueness as to his plans, which Hickson, having accomplished his purpose, did not notice. He was very much pleased with the results of his diplomacy. No one could say a word against Christine now. It wasn’t her fault if the engagement was broken. Riatt was a noble fellow—only, the noblest sometimes forgot these simple, practical details.

The next day Riatt paid his bill at the hotel and went away without leaving an address.

Few of us have driven past rows of suburban cottages, or through streets lined by city flats, without considering how easy it would be to sink one’s identity and become part of a new unknown life. Riatt certainly had often thought of such a possibility and now he put his plans into operation. He took no great precautions against discovery, for he had no notion that any one would be particularly interested in knowing his whereabouts. But he allowed those at home to suppose he was working in New York, as he suggested to those in New York that he had very naturally gone home.

As a matter of fact, he had taken a position with a new company which was constructing aëroplanes for the market, into which in past times he had put a little money. He hired a small flat in Brooklyn, on the top floor, so that he had a glimpse of the harbor from his sitting-room windows. He spent the last of his ready money in buying out the dilapidated furniture of his predecessor; and then with the assistance of the janitor’s wife, who gave him his breakfast and did what she called “redding up the place,” he began to live on the slim salary that his new job gave him.

Every afternoon he would take the new machines out and fly at sunset over the sandy plains of Long Island, would dine cheaply at some neighboring restaurant, and would return to his flat about ten, go to bed early and be ready for work the next morning.

The only relaxation he allowed himself was the excitement of hating Christine, to which he now devoted a great deal of time and thought. It was the only thing that gave life any interest.

What was loss of money, after all, he said to himself, for an able-bodied man? He could bear that well enough, if his life had not been poisoned, if hope hadn’t been taken from him. She had spoilt him for everything else. His success, if ever he should succeed, would not bring him what most men wanted of success—a companion and a home. He had nothing to work for, and yet nothing to do except work. It was all his own fault, he said; and blamed her all the more bitterly. He was glad, he thought, that he had made it impossible for her to have a final interview with him; and in his heart he could not forgive her for not having overcome the obstacles to a meeting which he had set up in the last frenzied days in New York.

“If I were of a revengeful disposition,” he said to himself, “I should ask nothing better than that she should marry Linburne”; and he concluded that he was not revengeful because he found he did not want it. He made up his mind after the most prolonged consideration that a woman such as Christine exercised the maximum influence for evil; a thoroughly wicked woman could not help inspiring distrust, but a nature like hers had enough good to attach you and yet left you nothing to depend upon.

He read the papers, awaiting the announcement of her marriage, but found no mention of her name except once, toward the end of May, a short paragraph announcing that she had gone out of town for the season.

It was soon after he had read this that he came home earlier than usual and let himself into his little flat. The day had been successful, a new device in the engine was working well and the company had had a large order from abroad. And as usual, with the prospect of success had come to him a bitter sense of the emptiness of the future. He was thinking of Christine, and when he turned the switch of the electric light, there she was. She was sitting in a large shabby armchair, drawn close to the window, so that she could look out at the river. She had taken off her hat, and her hair shown particularly golden and her eyes looked brightly blue in the sudden glare of light.

“You’re dreadfully late,” she said, quite as if she had charge of his comings and goings. “I’ve been here hours and hours and hours.”

Now that he actually saw her before him, it was neither love nor hate that he felt, but an undefinable and overmastering emotion that seemed to petrify him, so that he stood there quite silent with his hand on the switch.

“Well,” she went on, “aren’t you surprised to see me?”

He bent his head.

“Can you guess why I have come?”

He shook his head.

She looked a little distressed at this. “Then perhaps I’ve made a mistake in coming.”

At this he spoke for the first time. “I should say that the chances were that you had,” he said, and his tone was not agreeable.

The edge of his words seemed to give her back all her confidence. “Now, how strange that you should not know why I’m here! I’ve come, of course, to return your pearls.” He saw now, between the laces of her summer dress that she was wearing them. “In common honesty I could hardly keep them.” She put up her hands to the clasp, but it did not yield at once to her touch, and she looked up at him. “I think you’ll have to undo it for me,” she murmured, with bent head.

“I don’t want them,” he answered, with temper. “I never want to see them again.”

“Nor me, either, perhaps?”

“Nor you either—perhaps.”

She rose and approached him. “I’ll keep them on one condition, Max—that you take permanent charge of both of us.” Then seeing that she had produced no change in his expression, she came very close indeed. “There’s no use in looking like a stone image, Max. It won’t save you.”

“Save me! And what is my danger?”

“I’m your danger, my dear.”

“Not any longer, Christine.”

“You mean you don’t love me any more?”

“Not a bit.”

At this she shifted her ground with admirable ease.

“In that case,” she said cheerfully, “we can talk the whole subject over quite dispassionately.”

“Quite, if there were anything to talk over.”

“Only first,” she said, “aren’t you going to ask me to stay to dinner? It’s very late, you know—”

“I don’t dine here,” he answered, “and I doubt if you would eat very much at the restaurant where I take my meals.”

“Well, would you mind my going into the kitchen and making myself a cup of tea?”

He gave his consent, but evinced no intention of accompanying her. To see her like this, in his own home, where he had so often imagined her being and where she would never be again, was torture to him.

After an interval that seemed to him an eternity, she came back flushed and triumphant, carrying a tray on which were tea, toast and scrambled eggs.

“There,” she said, “don’t you think I’ve improved? Don’t you think I’m rather a good housewife?”

The element of pathos in her self-satisfaction was too much for him. “I’m afraid I’m not in the mood either for comedy or for supper,” he said.

Her face fell. “I thought you’d be so hungry,” she observed gently. “But no matter. Sit down and we’ll talk.”

“I know of nothing to talk about,” he returned, but he dropped reluctantly into a hard, stiff chair opposite her.

“I’ll tell you what there is to talk about,” said Christine. “Something that has never been mentioned in all the discussions that have been taking place. And that is my feelings.”

“Your feelings,” Riatt began, rather contemptuously, but she stopped him.

“No,” she said, “you shan’t say what you were going to. My feelings, my feelings for you. You’ve told me that you didnotlove me, that you despised me, that youdidlove me, but you’ve never asked how I felt to you.”

“But you’ve made it so clear. You felt that, in default of anything else, I would do.”

She leaned across the table and looked at him gravely. “Max,” she said, “I love you.”

He made no motion, not even one of contempt, and so she got up, and coming round the table, she knelt down beside him and put her arms tightly about him. Still he did not move, except that his hands, which had been hanging at his sides, now gripped the edges of the chair with the rigidity of iron, and he said in a voice which sounded even in his own ears like that of a total stranger:

“What folly this is, Christine!”

“Why is it folly?”

“If you had said this six weeks ago, while I still had enough money to—”

“Max,” she said, “I love you”

“If I had said it then you wouldn’t have believed me.” He looked at her; it was true.

“But now,” she went on rapidly, “you must believe me. If I come now to live with you and work for you, no one can accuse me of mercenary motives—not even you, Max. I shan’t get anything from the bargain but you, and that is all I want.”

“This is madness,” said Riatt, trying not very sincerely to free himself.

“Yes, of course it’s mad, like all really logical things,” she answered. “But that’s the way it’s going to be. I love you, and I am going to stay with you.”

“I couldn’t let you,” he said. “I couldn’t accept such a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice, Max. That’s the first really stupid thing I ever heard you say. It isn’t a sacrifice; it’s a result, a consequence of the fact that I love you. It isn’t a question of my doing it, or your letting me. It simply can’t be otherwise. The other things I used to value—parties and pretty clothes and luxuries—they were a sort of game I played because I did not know any other. But only part of me was alive then. I was like a blind person; and they were my stick; but now that I can see, the stick is just in my way. It isn’t silly and romantic to believe in love, Max. The hardest-headed, most practical people believe in it—every one who has any sense really believes in it, when they find it. To be poor, to be uncomfortable—it’s a price, but a small one to pay for love. Isn’t that true—true, at least, as far as you’re concerned?”

“Oh, yes, as far as I’m concerned—”

“Then what right have you to think it’s not true to me? Don’t be such a moral snob, Max. If love’s the best thing in the world for you, it’s ever so much more so for me—I need it more.”

“Nobody could need it more than I do,” he answered, suddenly clasping her to him.

“It’s the way it’s going to be, anyhow,” she murmured.

“I can’t let you go,” he said, as if arguing with an unseen auditor.

She nodded in a somewhat contracted space. “That’s it,” she announced. “It has to be.”

It was only a few days later that Nancy Almar, driving past a well-known house-furnishing shop on her way home to tea, was surprised to observe her brother standing, with a salesman at his elbow, in trancelike contemplation of a small white enameled ice-box. With her customary decision, Nancy ordered her chauffeur to stop, and entering the shop by another door she stood close beside Hickson during his purchase of the following articles: the ice-box, an improved coffee percolator and a complete set of kitchen china of an extremely decorative pattern.

“Bless me, Ned,” she said suddenly in his ear, “might one ask when you are going to housekeeping, and with whom?”

There was no denying that Ned’s start was guilty, and his manner confused as he answered, “Oh, they’re not for me—”

The salesman who, perhaps, lacked tact, or possibly only wanted to get away to wait on another customer, said at this point:

“And the address, sir? I have the name—Mrs. Max Riatt.”

“Riatt married!” cried Nancy. “But to whom? I thought he had nothing left in the world.”

“He hasn’t,” answered Ned, hastily scribbling the address on a card and handing it to the man.

“Oh, then he’s married some one who loves him for himself alone, I know. That faithful sleek-headed girl from his home town. Won’t Christine be angry when she hears it! She always likes her old loves to pine a long time before they console themselves. Let us go and tell her. Or is she away still?”

A rather sad smile lit up Hickson’s countenance as he followed his sister to her motor. “I think she knows it,” he said.

Nancy put her hand on his arm. “Oh, dear, darling Ned,” she said. “Get in and drive home with me and tell me all about it. I knew he really never cared for Christine. She dazzled and distressed him in about equal proportions. And yet I doubt if Miss—Whatever-Her-Name-Was—will be very exciting—”

“It is not Miss Lane, who, by the way, I like and admire very much,” said Ned, firmly.

“Who is it? Some one I know?”

“Yes, you know her.”

Something in his extreme solemnity transferred the idea to her.

“You don’t mean that Christine—”

He nodded. “I was at their wedding yesterday.”

“And where are they?”

“That’s it, Nancy. They’re living in a flat and they have no servant—”

His sister leaned back and laughed heartily, and then composing her countenance with an effort, she said: “My poor dear! But it’s really all for the best. She won’t stay with him six months.”

“Nancy! She’ll stay with him forever.”

“Where is this flat?”

“I’ve promised not to tell. They don’t want to be bothered by all of us.”

“They want to conceal their deplorable situation, of course. Well, my dear, I can wait. Six months from now I’ll ask them to dine to meet Linburne. Christine’s dresses will be a little out of fashion, and they’ll come in a trolley car, and she’ll have a veil over her head—”

“Six months from now Riatt may be on the way to making a nice little sum. He has a very good thing, he thinks.”

“He’d better be quick about it. A flat in summer! Oh, the cinders on the window-sill, and the sun on the roof, and the knowledge that all of us are going out of town to lawns and lakes—He’d better be quick, Ned.”

The motor had stopped before the door of Nancy’s little house which was arrayed in its summer dress of red and white awnings, and red and white window boxes. The footman had rung the bell, and was waiting with his eye on the front door, so as to catch the right second for opening the door of the motor.

“Nancy,” said her brother, with real horror in his tone, “you talk as if you wanted her to fail.”

“I do. I do, of course.”

“Why? Do you hate her?”

Nancy nodded. “Yes, I hate her now. I didn’t used to.”

“It seems to me this is just the moment to admire her. It may be foolish, but surely what she has done is noble, Nancy.”

The hall door opened and simultaneously the door of the motor, and Nancy, putting out one foot, said over her shoulder:

“Oh, Ned, what a goose you are! Don’t you know any woman would have done what she’s done, if she had the chance—the real chance?”

She ran up the steps and into her house, leaving her brother staring after her in amazement.

THE END

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